The theme of the new book by Lino Terlizzi, editorialist of the Corriere del Ticino, published by Platypus editions, it is clear from the title "No fear. Facts and economic data for a counter-narrative in opposition to sovereignty and populism".
According to the author, sovereignty and populism proliferate precisely with a narrative of fear which "they partly incorporate from segments of society and largely multiply with their words and their actions". The aim is clear: to win consensus and votes. How to fight this trend? Focusing on what Ferruccio De Bortoli defines in the preface to the book “a reasoned agenda” capable of providing citizens with balanced opinions, data and descriptions.
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Below is the preface to the book written by the former director of Corriere della sera and of Il Sole 24 Ore, Ferruccio de Bortoli:
There are no free lunches. And not even endless happy hours. The world is drowning in a sea of liquidity. It discounts the paradox of negative interest, whereby the creditor finances his debtor, but money does not multiply at will without invisible costs over time. Not even in the form of bitcoin. It does not grow in the Field of Miracles. And Pinocchio, less naive and likeable than the character born from Collodi's imagination, can be found almost everywhere. Of every political background, of every origin. Even in the severe Anglo-Saxon world, the social importance of truth has been lost, as well as the discipline of anchoring numbers to reality. Imagine the Latin one.
Sovereignism and nationalism in their various forms - Lino Terlizzi explains to us in this essay - feed on some consolidated legends in economics. One above all (variable not only in Italy): the idea that the return to full freedom to print money is synonymous with independence and restores the strength to grow and develop to economies bent by the iron and grim logic of international finance. Argentina and Venezuela are perfectly sovereign, I would struggle to define them independent given the slip knot of their debts, aggravated by the spiral between inflation and devaluation.
Terlizzi's reasoned agenda is responsible for demolishing many easy narratives that fuel the worst prejudices in economics and politics. Nostalgia or rather regret for the past is the identity ingredient that moves the consensus for neo-protectionism, for the desire to "do it yourself", in the fascination for walls and fences. The crisis of representative democracies it is fueled by fear of the future. He tried to soothe it with the political conjugation of the verb to return. Growing up again, free from international ties, returning to caressing imperial suggestions. A palliative to the anxiety of losing control of national destinies, but much more trivially of one's own lives.
The look at a hypothetical time that was, described as an Eden too soon forgotten, in the decomposed fury of the years of globalization, collides with the basic data of market economies. We are living right now in the world the longest development cycle in history; poverty has sharply decreased. The Stock Exchanges have reached recent all-time highs. We have never lived so long and healthy. Certainly with many differences, disparities, injustices. More accentuated than in the last century. With the suffering of a middle class that has found itself impoverished and lost in planning its own future. But it certainly won't solve its problems by cultivating the dangerous dream of a return to the past, closed borders, protectionism or, worse, autarchy.
Something strange happens. In the social belly of the world's main economies, strongly intertwined by infinite value chains, the seeds of an impossible restoration are stirring. The illusion of continuing enjoy the benefits of globalisation, of exports, without paying the cost – which can and must be corrected but not eliminated – or the effects of migration, new technologies, competition from emerging countries. The claim that the state, whose ability to raise resources is burdened by welfare systems and reduced fiscal effectiveness, is able to provide extensive collective protection. Even in exchange (and this is what is also happening in some countries of the European Union) of a renunciation of the rights of freedom, of the quality of citizenship.
The State is not only a regulator of the market, a promoter of knowledge, a provider of security, but a sort of new Leviathan. Immanent. Capable of intervening in market failures – sometimes it is absolutely necessary – but also called upon to cover the losses of defunct companies with taxpayers' money. The future is not prepared by defending the past which no longer generates profits for shareholders or benefits for society. It is promoted with better training of human capital, in the open competition of ideas, projects, knowledge and investing in technologies, in the best start-ups. Not defending bandwagons full of debts (but also of votes).
Who will pay the bill in the end? None, is the implication of some theories that would like to create - for example in Italy - something absolutely new, the reduction of public debt with tax cuts in deficit in the illusion that revenues will increase thanks to impetuous growth. Never happened. It is a continuous throwing the "ball further" trusting in the luck of making others pay the costs of their own ineptitude and in the awareness that political cycles are necessarily short. And short is also the memory of public opinion. Therefore, announcements are more important than reports. The most productive bonuses of consensus of system reforms by their nature of long and uncertain duration.
The worst sovereignist and nationalist narrative then developed a genetic idiosyncrasy for finance. Noting the excesses (in a normal world, the States and the independent authorities have the task of regulating and preventing them) one cannot fail to notice that, in this way, one risks losing the basic notion of credit. As if banks weren't businesses. Thus losing the fundamental link between savings and investments. Speculation has always existed but it is contrasted with the transparency and efficiency of the markets, not with archaic prejudices and executioner fury that send institutes and intermediaries into the hell of immorality. The simplification of reality is a harbinger of legends and suspicions. It clears the authoritarian ghosts of the twentieth century, gives breath, especially on the Net, to the worst prejudices. Every financial tool can be used well or badly. Derivatives, for example, are useful when they parcel out risk, harmful when they hide it.
Terlizzi's book, as I said at the beginning, is a precious modern dictionary of misunderstandings. In economics and in politics. Explain the virtues of Swiss direct democracy beyond stereotypes or easy imitations. The Swiss-Crossed system is based on information and responsibility in collective choices. And it is no coincidence that the confederal government expresses, in sharing the choices, even between very different parties, not only its balance point but above all the awareness that national destinies are in everyone's hands. Elsewhere it is called consociativism. It even has a negative connotation. And in multiethnic societies one can and must coexist. Integration is one thing, coexistence in mutual respect for freedom and traditions is another. Perhaps the latter is more a utopia than a good practice in latitudes (and altitudes) other than Switzerland.
Source: Have No Fear
